Tuesday, May 12, 2009

A Shoe-In




What do Dorothy and the Pope have in common?

[Cue (annoying, yet catchy) music from Jeopardy...]

She visits the Emerald City. He lives in the Vatican City.

Nope. Not the answer I was looking for.

The shoes. Those red (Prada, I'm told) shoes of his keep him grounded. Dorothy also wore red shoes.

Remember the refrain after she clicked her heels 3 times? "There's no place like home, there's no place like home, there's no place like home."

Well, I've been informed of the answer to the question "Why does the Pope wear red shoes?"

In case he needs to get back to the Vatican real quick, he clicks his heels... and says..."There's no place like Rome...there's no place like..."
Now I don't truly mean to insult his eminent Holiness, and I understand that the wearing of those red shoes have a history and a meaning, but c'mon, those shoes are so "fly" that I'd expect to see them on this website. Talk about a pair of traffic stoppers!

2 comments:

Robin said...

That's hilarious! I didn't know the Pope wore red shoes! "There's no place like Rome." Hahahaha!

Leora said...

Actually, the "real" Dorothy, the one created by L. Frank Baum, wore silver shoes. These represented silver money and getting off the gold standard (represented by the yellow brick road). Dorothy's silver shoes were intended to represent the Populist hope(munchkins are the populists) that America would abandon the yellow brick road of the gold standard, and monetize silver.

According to Wikipedia, "the movie's creators changed them from silver to ruby to take advantage of the chromatic possibilities of the new Technicolor film process."